Peter Rieger
Product Manager
Airborne Laser Scanning
RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH
Austria

Biography
Peter Reiger studied electrical engineering, telecommunications engineering at Vienna University of Technology. Prior to joining REIGL he was the Project Manager at VERBUND AG, VERBUND AHP, VERBUND Telekom Service GmbH. Since 2005 he is the Product Manager Airborne Laser Scanning
RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH. He has numerous publications related to mobile and airborne laser scanning.

Abstract
Sampling the World in 3D by Airborne LIDAR - Assessing the Efficiency of LIDAR Systems for Large-scale Surveying

Expert knowledge is often required to estimate the performance achievable with different LIDAR systems in real world applications and to assess the specification's impact on the deliverable data product as well as on the efficiency of the sensor for large-scale surveying jobs. Typical data sheets of LIDAR systems are mostly of little help and sometimes even misleading. It is difficult to determine the impact of various instrument features on the actual efficiency. We discuss a small subset of specified features: laser pulse repetition rate, effective measurement speed, ranging capabilities, scanner type and scan speed. We illustrate the achievable distribution of the measurements on the ground for typical scenarios in airborne LIDAR data acquisition for a representative selection of state-of-the-art LIDAR instruments. In particular, interference effects in scan patterns of multi-channel-output instruments are addressed. We also discuss an alternative metric for quantifying the distribution of measurements on the ground which provides more insight than the classical points-per-square-meter metric. A figure of merit for the ground sampling quality is derived allowing the comparison between LIDAR instruments based on different technologies.